There are currently a plethora of business communication constructions, marketing and advertising pieces and other items that are available in the market today for communicating products and services with an intended audience. Yet with this inordinately large selection of offerings and permutations, there remains a continuing need to develop new products due to changes in technology, societal trends, diversification of marketing, packaging and advertising campaigns and new information handling needs of businesses and consumers alike.
The market for printed communication material is also changing and becoming more sophisticated with the customers for such products, correspondingly becoming more demanding in having the communication deliver a more impactful message to customers. Printed products, such as communication pieces and other assemblies that are intended to be used in business communications, can be delivered in a wide variety of formats, constructions and configurations. However, the difficulty arises in maximizing the contact with each individual customer in order to try and capture repeat business opportunities with customers previously serviced by the business.
Today, there are wide varieties of product offerings available that serve multiple purposes and functions, including product offerings that are used in fulfilling the needs in the magnetic products market, such as promotional offerings.
Conventional manufacturing processes that are used today in creating magnets are typically based on applying a printed paper substrate over the surface of the magnet which then forms the image on the magnetic piece. Magnetic material is typically a very dark material, black or dark brown, and unless the paper ply is sufficiently thick, the darkness of the magnetic material will show through thus detracting from the image. Once the magnetic material is laminated to the paper material the assembly may then be collected, die-cut and the individual magnets created. That is, large sheets of magnetic materials may be used, over laminated with equally large printed sheets and then cut down to the appropriate size.
Specialty magnets, which may be referred to “prime” magnets are those having a glossy appearance. The image is commonly created by coating a varnish over the top of the paper ply that been printed typically on a flexographic press. Flexography is commonly used today for the production of the substrates that will be used in creating prime magnet materials as well as for the printing of decorative items, including the rendering of packaging. The technology employs a series of plates and one or more stations, containing inks (usually a different colored ink at each station) to apply colored images to the web as the web traverses the press. Through improvements in ink qualities and other modifications and enhancements in the technology, the image quality in flexographic presses and resulting products has improved to about 150 lines per inch.
For a point of reference, typically, screens that have rulings of about 60 to 100 lines per inch are normally used to make halftone printed images for newspapers. Screens with about 120 to 150 lines per inch are commonly used today to produce images for magazines and commercial printing. Such screens are regularly produced by electronic dot generation.
Electronic dot generation is normally performed by computers that use unique screening algorithms, in cooperation with electronic scanners and image setters, to produce halftone images that are to be subsequently used to render an image. The pixels of digitized images are first assembled into dots that are then used to form shapes, sizes, rulings, etc. which create the ultimate image produced on the substrate.
Such a conventional magnetic construction, a magnet in which a paper ply is placed directly on and adhered or otherwise affixed to the magnetic material, may suffer from various drawbacks which may be undesirable. Conventional assemblies can delaminate over time, such as due to exposure to moisture, dramatic temperature changes and other environmental conditions. If any delamination occurs with such prime magnet products, the prime magnet product will normally be ruined.
Another problem that may be encountered with such conventional magnetic constructions is that moisture may be is absorbed in the paper layer also can cause bubbling or rippling of the paper substrate. This situation can be a particular problem where the magnet is placed in a high humidity environment such as a kitchen refrigerator magnet.
What is needed therefore is a prime magnet construction that can be produced in a glossy configuration without suffering from the drawbacks associated with prior art constructions.